H.P. spied on journalists in leaks - Business - International Herald Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO — The California attorney general's investigation into the purloining of private phone records by agents of Hewlett-Packard has revealed that the monitoring effort began earlier than previously indicated and included journalists as targets.

The targets included nine journalists who have covered Hewlett-Packard, including one from The New York Times, the company said.

The company said this week that its board had hired private investigators to identify directors leaking information to the press and that those investigators had posed as board members - a technique known as pretexting - to gain access to their personal phone records.

In acknowledging Thursday that journalists' records had also been obtained, the company said it was apologizing to each one. "H.P. is dismayed that the phone records of journalists were accessed without their knowledge," a company spokesman, Michael Moeller, said.

In an interview Thursday about the state's criminal investigation of the Hewlett-Packard matter, Attorney General Bill Lockyer said, "A crime was committed." But he added: "It is unclear how strong the case is. Who is charged and for what is still an open question."

Lockyer said search warrants would be issued to obtain the records of Internet service providers in an attempt to trace the identities of the imposters. He said Hewlett-Packard was cooperating with the investigation into what he said was the first California case of a major corporation using such methods to obtain phone records.

An investigator with direct knowledge of the state's inquiry characterized the list of targets as "extensive," though that person would not elaborate. It could contain people other than journalists or directors.

Travis Dodd, general attorney with AT&T Services in San Antonio, who is working with the California prosecutors, said the records of John Markoff, a reporter for The Times in San Francisco, were a "target of the pretexting" in 2005.

Two other news organizations, the online technology news service CNET and The Wall Street Journal, said they had learned that their reporters had also been targets.

A top Hewlett-Packard official indicated earlier this week that the effort to obtain phone records had begun in January 2006 after an article appeared on CNET with accounts of a Hewlett-Packard management meeting. Those revelations prompted H.P.'s chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, to order an investigation of leaks, and the company has conceded that subterfuge was used by a subcontractor to gain phone records in the investigation.

Hewlett-Packard has refused to publicly disclose the names of the consulting firm it hired or the subcontractor that was used to pretext the records. The company has said that the outside consulting firm was instructed to conduct its investigation according to law and that the firm had told H.P. that its techniques were legal.

In May, that investigation identified the board's longest-serving member, George Keyworth II, as the source of the leak. He rebuffed a request to resign, but the company said he would not be renominated. Thomas Perkins, another board member, resigned in anger over the way the investigation was conducted. His efforts to get the company to acknowledge the reason for his departure led to this week's disclosures.

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There had been earlier concerns at the company about leaks around the time of Carleton Fiorina's dismissal as chief executive in early 2005. An investigation at that time, however, was only known to have involved interviews of board members.

Viet Dinh, Perkins's lawyer, said Thursday, "If it is true that the pretexting started before January 2006 and dated back to 2005, it would suggest a deeper and more troubling chain of events than the hiring of third-party pretexters and would reach much higher to persons responsible at H.P."

By Perkins's account, only the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a powerful Silicon Valley law firm and outside counsel for Hewlett-Packard, conducted investigations into leaks in 2005.

A spokeswoman for the law firm, Courtney Dorman, said the firm "absolutely, definitely did not" use pretexting or hire anyone who did pretexting during the firm's informal investigation of directors in 2005.

Moeller said Thursday that the company's statements about the pretexting had never confined those events to 2006.

A lawyer for The New York Times, David McCraw, said on Thursday evening, "We are deeply concerned by reports that the rights of one of our reporters were violated."

"To the extent that this is a criminal matter, we will cooperate with authorities to make sure any wrongdoing is prosecuted," he said. "To the extent it is a civil matter, we will pursue whatever legal recourse is available. We expect as an initial step that H.P. will make a prompt and full disclosure of what took place in regards to our reporter."

CNET said Thursday that phone records of one of its reporters, Dawn Kawamoto, had also been obtained. A spokeswoman, Sarah Cain, said: "These actions not only violated the privacy rights of our employee, but also the rights of all reporters to protect their confidential sources."

CNET said access to Kawamoto's records had been gained from the same Internet address used by the person who accessed the phone records of Perkins. A caller used the last four digits of her husband's Social Security number to establish an online account with AT&T to view the records. Access was gained on one date, in late January 2006, it said.

An article in The Wall Street Journal said records of its reporter, Pui-Wing Tam, had also been a target of pretexting activity. A spokesman for Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment.

Investor reaction to the Hewlett-Packard board furor has been muted. The company's stock closed Thursday at $35.42, down 2.85 percent from its close before news of the board's turmoil was reported. Indeed, at a Citigroup investor conference where Mark Hurd, the chief executive, spoke and answered questions Wednesday, no securities analyst asked about the problems.